News, reviews, information and apps for Windows Phone.

Ewan takes the Lumia 620 to SXSW: Part 3

Up till now the Lumia 620 has proven to be a little powerhouse of a smartphone. The specs might be a touch depressed compared to the larger handsets like the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920, but it's coping with every task that I've asked of it here on the streets of Austin and the SXSW Festival. It's time to look at the camera now, both for stills and video.

Sporting a f/2.4 28mm five megapixel camera (with regular optics by Nokia, no Carl Zeiss lenses here), the Lumia 620 is not going to win any imaging prizes when you put it next to the PureView branded Lumia 920 (or even the Symbian-powered 808). But when you put it next to handsets in the same price range, then the strength of the Lumia 620 starts to show through. Just like other areas in the Lumia 620, the handset is under promising and over delivering.

Let me explain, in today's video diary from Austin.

And so you can have a look yourself, here are the images used in the video.

The Nokia Lumia 620, for a budget shooter, is approaching best of class status. The microphone pick-up is especially impressive. Audio into smartphone videos has always been a bit of an issue for me (give me a mic-in socket any day of the week) but from impromptu videos when I've only got a smartphone on me, I'd trust the 620 to capture the moment. And that's a recurring idea around imaging - the camera you have is the most important camera. In this case, that goes for video as well.